7/22/2009

... Actually talking to Patton was a real pleasure—he seemed to open up in ways he hadn’t done in other interviews I’d read, mostly because the interviewers had asked him too many questions about Faith No More, or treated his music as “wacky.” By the time our conversation wound down, he was complaining that his ear hurt from pressing against the phone for over 90 minutes.

I still think Fantômas is a terrific band (I saw them live about a monthafter the interview), and I have tremendous respect for Patton’s business model. Like John Zorn does with his Tzadik label, he sustains Ipecac with the sales of his own projects, thus allowing himself the latitude to release resolutely uncommercial discs by artists he admires. This was a fun pieceto research and write, and one I look back on fondly.

"I think originally he (John Zorn) wanted Diamanda Galás to do it (Grand Guignol) , and somethinghappened and she didn’t do it, but he said, ‘Hey, this is theway I always intended it and I want you to do it.’ He did give me a little bit of direction, but for the most part he said, dowhatever the hell you want.” He sent it back and said, ‘No, no, no, no, no. This sounds great, but give me more.’ He really wanted a blasting—in certain sections, it’s just me,like a soloist.”

(With Delìrivm Còrdia of Fantômas), I wanted to force people to listen to it as one piece of music,” saysPatton. “Unless you were swallowing it as one giant pill, it wouldnever have the same effect. And in that regard, it was much more like contemporary classical music. They weren’t songs. They weren’t pieces. They weren’t frames. They weren’t little cells ofmusic. I wanted it to really come off as a monolithic, larger-thanlife experience, like sitting on the operating table or anything else.I wanted it to be long, drawn-out and painful.”... “It had a zillion parts, and there were onlycertain sections where I knew what the final arrangement was goingto be,” Patton recalls. “And I kind of kept them in the dark about it.